Sowell: Oust Dems to Halt Obama Before 'Point of No Return'

Influential economist Thomas Sowell tells Newsmax that voters must oust Democrats from their majorities in Congress to stop the Obama administration from continuing to take the country toward the “point of no return.”

Professor Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, also says it is “madness” to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of the, year as Obama and the Democrats appear intent on doing.

Sowell is also a syndicated columnist and prolific author whose latest book is “Dismantling America: and Other Controversial Essays.”

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Sowell says he is pessimistic about the future.

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“Part of it is due to the continuation of a long set of trends. But much of it is also due to the fact that the current administration is really escalating these trends that are going in the wrong direction.

“One of those trends is the notion that there’s some elite out there who ought to be taking decisions out of our hands and concentrating them in the hands of politicians, bureaucrats, and judges. That’s the big domestic problem.

“The huge international problem is our doing nothing while Iran is developing nuclear weapons, given that Iran is the largest sponsor of international terrorism in the world.”

Another trend “is the notion that people have rights for which there is no basis in any law, in any constitution, or in any organized philosophical or religious tradition.

“I saw a photograph recently of someone sitting on a corner with a sign saying, ‘I have a right to a job.’ I have no idea where that right comes from, and it can only be sustained if other people don’t have a right to decide who they want to hire.

“What needs to be done is to stop the existing administration from going even further in the wrong direction, because there is such a thing as a point of no return.

“I suspect that if the administration’s majority in both houses of Congress is not reduced or eliminated, we may well find ourselves unable to change the direction.”

If the Democrats do retain their majorities, “they can before the next presidential election make enough illegal aliens legal, and get them to vote for Obama, that he will have a second term. And that I think will be the point of no return.”

On the economy, Sowell tells Newsmax that “most of the mistakes that got us to where we are now are being repeated and even escalated. For example, the mistake of thinking that politicians in Washington can determine what ought to happen in the housing market, and in particular the idea that they ought to intervene to make it easier for those people they want to favor to have houses.”

Sowell declares that the Obama administration and the Democrats are circumventing the Constitution by “rushing through huge bills too quickly for the public to even know what’s in them — in fact, too fast for the congressmen who are voting on them to know what’s in them. This really destroys the whole notion of a self-governing society.”

Asked what will happen if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire at the end of the year, Sowell responds: “One of the things that will happen is that we will probably collect lower tax revenues. There’s a huge confusion between tax rates and tax revenues. After the Bush tax cuts, which were cuts in tax rates, revenues rose, just as tax revenues rose after the Reagan tax cuts in the ’80s and the Kennedy tax cuts in the ’60s and after other tax cuts at other times.

“So the idea that we’re going to reduce the deficit by eliminating the Bush tax cuts is madness, because all the empirical data indicate that the revenues have gone up after most of these kinds of tax cuts.”

Sowell believes that House Minority Leader John Boehner’s call for Obama to fire Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other members of the president’s economic team is “a very good suggestion.”

But he adds: “I think there is no chance whatsoever that will be done. Geithner may well be fired after the election, but the president is not about to fire any of these people before the election, since that would be an admission of the disaster they’ve created.”

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are linchpins of this disaster, Sowell says, “and if they aren’t privatized — or better, simply eliminated completely — there’s no reason why we can’t go through the same cycle again and again.”

Sowell also says he believes the risk of inflation down the road is “substantial,” and that will keep gold prices high. As for when we can expect a full recovery, he responds: “After this administration is prevented from driving us deeper and deeper into the hole, and I think this fall’s election will be sort of a last chance to stop that.”